


There's a little black spot on the sun today (that's my soul up there)

by plutosrose



Series: lightning only struck once [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula's Mental Instability, Dead Aang (Avatar), F/M, Minor Character Death, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: They were too young to fight this war.-The Day of Black Sun, redux.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: lightning only struck once [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811392
Comments: 11
Kudos: 58





	There's a little black spot on the sun today (that's my soul up there)

**Author's Note:**

> This is part 3 of the lightning only struck once series. I'd recommend starting from the beginning, although you are welcome to read each individually. 
> 
> Title is from the King of Pain by The Police

“I don’t know if you should come,” Katara admitted quietly.

The sun was just beginning to stream through the window in their room, droplets of rain clinging to the glass. In a few hours, it would be completely hidden by the moon. In a few hours, there was a chance that the war might be over.

Everything had to go right.

Zuko yawned - and if Katara didn’t know any better - was making a show of wiping the sleep away from his eyes. “I’m fully on your side, Katara, you don’t need to worry about me facing my father.”

Katara shook her head. “That’s not what I’m worried about.” Though truthfully, it had crossed her mind more than once. How would Zuko react when he came face-to-face with his father again? How would he react when he came face-to-face with Azula? 

He had been right by their side during every prison break they’d done, and yet, while she trusted him completely, there was a small part of her that felt like she still didn’t know him very well. 

If only knowing what was in his heart was enough.

“Then what are you worried about?” Zuko asked, reach out to run his fingers through her hair. It was the kind of affectionate gesture that was reserved for when the two of them were completely alone, though Sokka, Suki, and Toph weren’t stupid, especially when they knew that the only way either of them was sleeping lately was curled up together. 

“You will be just as vulnerable as the rest of them,” Katara admitted, avoiding his gaze as she hardened her expression. The last thing that she wanted was for Zuko to come face-to-face with Azula - but what she wanted even less, she thought, was for him to come face-to-face with Azula without his firebending. 

Zuko smiled slightly. It was the kind of small smile she’d seen rarely in the short time that she’d known the real him. “Honestly, I thought you were going to tell me that everyone on our side hates me.” 

Katara smiled back. “It might have crossed my mind, Fire Prince.” And she still wasn’t clear how her father would react, or how the other Water Tribe men, or the Earth Kingdom fighters would react. Some of them no doubt had seen him right beside her, Sokka, Suki, and Toph during each Fire Nation prison break, but how far would that go toward undoing a century of animosity and hatred?

“I spent weeks in the Earth Kingdom without using my bending,” Zuko countered. “Fought with Jet too, without using my bending.” He and his Uncle had been living undercover as refugees, and as the Earth Kingdom citizens they’d claimed to be, they certainly couldn’t have revealed that they knew any firebending, unless they cared to spend their time in an Earth Kingdom prison. 

He eyed Katara curiously. “Is that what you’re really worried about?” Although he wasn’t a natural prodigy like Azula was, firebending still came almost as naturally to him as breathing. On the one hand, he could understand why she’d suspect he’d feel defenseless without it, but even without it, he was hardly defenseless. He’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat and with a sword since a very young age. He had faith in the fact that he could be useful during the invasion, even during the eclipse. 

Katara shook her head. “I know you can take care of yourself, Zuko.”

“Then what is it?”

It was hard to put into words. She and Sokka had been fighting this war alongside Aang ever since he’d come out of the ice. Her fifteenth birthday was in a couple of months, and she’d already sat in war meetings alongside Earth Kingdom generals. She’d seen the inside of Fire Nation prisons, where they held Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe citizens that they deemed ‘war criminals.’ She’d seen her friends fight fully grown adults until they were exhausted and bloody. She’d killed more than a handful of Fire Nation soldiers - all, with the exception of two - in self-defense. She’d held Aang - only twelve years old - in her arms as he’d died.

She’d lived more of life than she’d expected. 

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she murmured quietly as Zuko pulled her close. “I don’t want anything to happen to any of us.” She squeezed her eyes shut. She and Sokka might have made the decision not to go home - same as Toph - but it didn’t mean that she didn’t worry constantly about what would happen if they were arrested and put in a Fire Nation prison that they couldn’t escape from. 

“Katara,” Zuko said gently. She expected him to say that nothing would happen to any of them, but that reassurance never came. Instead, “Things have already happened. To all of us.”

\- 

None of them - Sokka and Toph included - ate very much that morning. “I’m looking forward to the food we’re going to get when we beat the Firelord,” Sokka grinned thinly, pushing the food around on his plate. 

They all forced smiles. 

-

Although Hakoda and Bato repeatedly said that they had no problem with Zuko, Katara was almost certain that the glances they kept exchanging were proof otherwise. “If you have something to say, you should say it, Dad,” Katara said sharply.

While she had expected Hakoda to look angry with her, he only looked tired. He turned to Zuko. “Are you sure that you want to do this?” 

Zuko looked expressionless between both of them. “Yes.”

Bato pursed his lips. “You might have to face people you know. People who you care about.”

“The only thing I care about is ending this war,” Zuko said in a measured, tight tone.

-

During Sokka’s speech about the invasion, Zuko threads his fingers through hers. He squeezes her hand tightly when Sokka gets to mentioning Aang’s sacrifice. 

And yet all Katara can think is that they were and are all too young to be the ones fighting this war. 

-

It’s right before they’re about to go under at the Great Gates of Azulon that Zuko took her hands in his. 

“I just wanted to tell you that it means everything to me that you accepted me,” he says quietly. “No matter what happens today, I need you to know that.” 

Katara’s heart aches in her chest. Before they had left the South Pole, she’d found the wartime romance stories swapped by the fire to be beautiful and heart-wrenching, but there was nothing that was beautiful or heart-wrenching about what Zuko was implying. 

“You were going to have plenty of opportunities to tell me that,” she tried to reassure him. 

He pressed a kiss to her hands. 

“Just in case.”

-

Eight minutes. 

Katara remembered when she was little and learning to count out seconds and minutes with the other Water Tribe children in the South Pole. Each small second seemed to add up to something huge and insurmountable, and now…

Well, eight minutes felt like water running through her fingers.

So far, Zuko’s lack of bending hadn’t slowed him down. He’d stayed close to her side, pushing Fire Nation soldiers into punishing holds that dislocated shoulders and broke bones. He was skilled enough to knock knives that flew for her neck when her back was turned straight out of the air. 

The plan, when Aang had been alive, had always been to have him face Firelord Ozai. None of them had truthfully imagined how the war would end after that. War had been such a part of life in the Fire Nation for the past century that total surrender seemed unlikely. And even if the Fire Nation surrendered after Firelord Ozai was gone, none of them had given a single thought to what would happen next. 

The goal was still to fight Firelord Ozai, although none of them, especially and particularly Zuko had felt good about their chances, and had tried to avoid the topic as much as possible. 

But when they got to the empty throne room, they had a new problem to solve without Aang’s help. 

“Do we need to find him?” Katara asked Zuko sharply. “Can we do this without finding him?” 

“You’re asking me that now?” Zuko looked at her incredulously. “Didn’t I explain Fire Nation politics to all of you like a week ago?”

A series of blank looks was all he got in response. Zuko could have laughed if the stakes weren’t so damn high. 

“Is it possible to take the Fire Nation capital without capturing or killing him?” Sokka asked. “If we can’t, we have to turn back now.” 

“Are you guys serious about turning back right now?” Toph sputtered. “We are literally in the throne room!”

“That’s not going to matter very much when we don’t know if the invasion will work,” Suki piped up.

“I think we can take the capital,” Zuko admitted, although the uncertainty in his tone was palpable. “If we can get the Fire Sages on our side after we take it, maybe we can end the war.”

“Lovely to see you too, ZuZu.”

His blood ran cold.

Azula stepped out from behind the throne, and sat down, languidly crossing her legs. “It took you awhile to get here. Kind of disappointing, really.” 

Zuko gritted his teeth and took a step forward, but Katara was quick to push him back. “You going to face us alone?” she asked.

Azula tutted to herself and examined her nails. “The little Water Tribe girl. You know ZuZu, Mai talked about her a lot.” 

Zuko pushed past Katara. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Mai,” Azula repeated, a small smile dancing across her face. “She talked about her a lot. And you. On and on and on. _Zuko would never let you do this._ You know, stuff like that, about how you were going to find her, save her, would never leave her for some _peasant._ Honestly, it was quite boring. I can’t believe that you’d think I’d commit all of that to memory.”

“Where is she?!” Zuko snapped, rage tight in his jaw.

Azula smiled more broadly now. “In a hole in the ground with Ty Lee that’s so deep you’re never going to be able to find her.”

“Zuko!” Katara said fervently. “She’s trying to bait you.”

“Well, it worked!” Zuko snapped, sword centimeters from Azula’s neck. 

“You’re not going to kill me,” Azula yawned, even as Toph encased her in stone. “You’ve always been a turtle duck, ZuZu. Not a dragon. Not even a lion vulture or a sea raven, really.” 

Zuko’s muscles tensed, and it was enough. 

“Well, time’s up,” Azula beamed, and the rock exploded, sending them all flying backward. 

Zuko kicked up flames in Azula’s direction, but Azula wasn’t interested in volleying back her own blue flames.

Instead, she did what she did best.

She calculated, she waited, and she struck.

And when the lightning came toward her, Katara saw her death in front of her eyes. 

The moment that Zuko stood in front of the lightning bolt, Katara felt her heart lurch in her chest. 

He had mentioned the re-direction technique before - it was one of the things that they’d whispered about at night after everyone was asleep. He explained that his Uncle had learned it from Water Tribe benders and applied the technique to lightningbending. 

He told her that he wished that he could bend like her. 

And in that moment, Katara wished that he could too, because the movement was inexact, an inexperienced copy of a bending move she’d learned a long time ago. 

The lightning moved through Zuko, and then it stopped. 

And all Katara could think of as her eyes widened was Aang’s body, plummeting to the earth. 

When Zuko collapsed, Katara’s first thought was over the water from the spirit oasis that she wore around her neck.

And her second thought was of Azula. Azula, who was normally a picture of perfect control, who was cackling and fidgeting erratically at the sight of Zuko on the ground. “Oh ZuZu,” she snickered. “You never did put up much of a fight, did you?” 

Her third thought was that she wasn’t going to let Azula take someone she cared about away from her again. 

“Stay with Zuko,” she said to the three of them. 

“Katara, are you insane?” Sokka sputtered. “Are you seriously going to go and fight Azula by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“I’m coming with you,” Toph offered. “I could have done it when I had her in the earth. I should have done it.”

Had they really all been seconds away from being able to end Azula’s life and not taken it? Katara bit her lip. 

She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“Okay,” she murmured. “Sokka, Suki, you stay here. Toph and I will go. See if you can find dad.”

Sokka nodded. “Go.”

-

Azula led them through a maze inside the Fire Nation palace. Katara found herself feeling grateful that she hadn’t said no to Toph accompanying her, because every time Azula tried to throw them off the scent, Toph followed her footsteps.

In the end, Katara wished that there’d been some huge climatic battle. A battle where she could have proven to Azula that she wasn’t the same girl that had held Aang’s lifeless body in the caves anymore. She carried the hope of revolution inside of her. She was a warrior.

But in the end, she supposed, nobody is allowed to truly get what they want.

The icy dagger that she’d driven straight through Azula’s neck had made her gasp wetly for air. It had been somewhat of an inspired moment on her part. She hadn’t needed her bending water - instead, she had pulled water from the air and formed it into a deadly weapon that even Azula hadn’t been able to see coming. 

Even though Toph looked impressed, (and truly, she did appreciate the fact that she was impressed by her ability), she wasn’t impressed.

She wanted to unspool what had happened to Mai and Ty Lee. She wanted to know what had happened to Zuko in the Fire Nation that had made him join them. She wanted to take every lie that Azula had ever said in her entire life - whether they were relevant to her or not - and she wanted to crack them wide open.

But in the end, she didn’t get that either. Azula didn’t say anything when she died, and somehow that made her angrier.

-

Without Azula holding sway over the court, the Fire Nation sages folded easily. “No one has seen Firelord Ozai since the Day of Black Sun,” they told Zuko. “You are our rightful leader.” 

“Are you serious?” Sokka had sputtered. “He just up and disappeared? The Firelord? The guy that’s in charge of your country?”

The High Sage nodded. “There was a lockdown shortly before the day of the eclipse, and since then, we have all been dealing with Princess Azula. It will be important for you to move quickly, Prince Zuko. There are some who may not look so kindly on you spilling the blood of a Crown Princess.”

Zuko’s face seemed to have turned to stone. The silence that followed was dark.

“He didn’t spill blood, I did,” Katara said. “And I’ll take responsibility for it if I have to.”

Zuko gave her a look of incredulity that Sokka quickly mirrored. “Nobody’s asking you to go anywhere.” 

Katara pursed her lips. “If it will make it easier for you to be put on the throne, I will do it.”

“No,” Zuko said, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s final.”

-

The day before Zuko’s coronation, Katara kisses him for the first time.

The end of the war isn’t what she imagined. Firelord Ozai’s whereabouts still have not been determined. Aang is dead. Zuko still has not been able to find Mai or Ty Lee and sometimes screams for his mother in his sleep.

Happily ever after, she decides, is written in blood.


End file.
